On 5 October 1874 the Caucasus Commission told the Armenian Church that the tsar had approved the seminary charter and it was allowed to open.Graduates of the seminary included Komitas, a pioneering ethnomusicologist and arranger of church music.During and after the Armenian genocide, the Mother See of Holy Etchmiadzin was filled with massive numbers of refugees.Catholicos Gevork I and the director, Bishop Karekin Hovsepiants, decided to temporarily close the seminary in December 1917.On 28 June 1928, Catholicos Gevork V applied to the president of the Peoples Commissariat Council Sahak Ter-Gabrielian to reopen the seminary.